And I'm sorry, but Prime Time was so embarrassing I had to go back and clean it up. I didn't rewrite the whole thing (especially since my memory isn't particularly fresh; I read the comics years ago and my books are in another state and even if I did have them, screw you if you think I'm reading the Rogue Prime ones again), just edited it to be less awkward. Some parts actually held up fine, some parts are just really sappy, and some lines made no bloody sense even to me. And what the holy hell was I thinking when I stuck that random, poorly written boner joke into the paragraph about Kevin having a flashback to his first Prime transformation?? How I illustrated my feelings towards the ending of the series was also pretty fuckheaded.

- CK

02/20 - Ah Yes, The Great Madness
The following pages have been updated to the new format:

Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Bionic Commando: Round 2
I also changed the names of these two articles to something less offensive. Wow, I was being WAY too mean in these. Either I've chilled out over the years or that game has even made me retroactively easier on everything else.

"Hey Codie, shouldn't some of the pages in Lemmings Forever be an easy convert?" Actually, I want that section of the site to have a different header than the others, which I need to actually make before I do any conversions over there.

And a couple of announcements. First, updates are probably going to be a bit sparse over the next couple of months. I'm taking five CIST classes this semester, including one in database design that's taught me to despise online classes. What updates I do get out are mainly going to be updating old pages to the new format, music updates, and quickies. I wanted to finish the Merged Hulk thing on New Years, but that fell through. Then I thought I could get it ready for Valentine's Day, but that too got kicked in the head. It's probably going to have to wait until Summer. If you want morsels in between updates, follow me on Twitter.

Second, the quickies for this year are probably going to be heavy on replays. See, in the wake of finishing Pokemon Omega Ruby it occured to me that I'd never finished either Pokemon Gold or Silver; I futzed around with a fan translated ROM of Silver back before it was officially released, and I've gotten... ten? badges in Crystal, but got stuck in Cerulean City because I couldn't figure out how to get back up a one-way path from Pewter Town. Anyway, I fired up my copies, along with Blue, and found the batteries in all three were dead. So I figured I'd learned how to replace batteries, using a method where you replace the entire clip rather than cutting the old battery out of it. So far I've successfully changed the batteries in those three and a spare Startropics. And since some of my other games may not be far behind, maybe it's time to gradually replace their batteries. Of course, that means losing my data, and what else is there to do at that point but recreate it? Been wanting to replay Super Mario RPG anyway, but I'd like to replace a few more cheap games' batteries before attempting that one.

Until next time, Ciao
-CK

01/19 - Another Kind of Game-Breaking Kitty
Putting the final bow on 2014 with The Year in Review. I tried to get that done sooner, but Binding of Isaac: Rebirth kept getting in the way. I know, I'm as surprised as you.

01/07 - Make My Day
And now the December Quickies. Bit of an underwhelming month, actually. Though I did that Elgato for Christmas, and updated the Mass Effect screenshot in November as I said I would. Eventually I'd like to update the screenshot for NIER in November 2012, though I'd hate to lose the actual action in that screen.

12/22 - Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In
I finally got the November Quickies out. Now I've got one last thing to get done before Christmas...

And while we're on the subject, I'm starting to think somebody is deliberately saying stupid shit in hopes of getting another turn with the verbal Cat O' Nine Tails. Talk about getting what you paid for, mate. And before anyone accuses me of stalking or something, somebody sent that gem to me on Twitter.

12/12 - An End of Semester Treat
Second Cracked article in the pipeline: The 6 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Video Game Design. And sweet, most of what I wrote actually made it past editorial this time! Rather than me telling you which three I wrote, I thought I'd see if people on Twitter can figure it out (one of them should be pretty obvious even if you're not a regular reader)

Because of finals I don't have any new content, only a sexy new Update Log brought to you by iframes. Hard to imagine that I've been updating this place for almost ten years now.

UPDATE UPDATE 12/13:JunkyBiggs on Twitter wins. I wrote Shadow of the Beast, Fable 3, and Dirty Harry/Phantasy Star.

11/27 - Turkey Day
Four quickies for October 2014! Also, all of Review Quickies has been updated to the new format, and everything back to 2011 has been added to the index.

Man, some of the 2011 quickies are pretty dodgy, and a handful of them looked like I never bothered to proofread them (i.e. Pluto in May 2011, which I did go back and fix). And then I hit the "Terrible Old Format" ones. You have no idea how tempting it was for me to wipe them; as well as some really questionable scores (I only rated Okami a "decent"???) the writing on those things is uninformative and just godawful all round. I only left them so that I could have something to point myself to and think "I could be doing worse!"

And with that, I'm going to go celebrate Thanksgiving the proper way: with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon.

11/19 - There's Plenty More Gratuitous Swearing Where That Came From!
It's my fifth (or third-and-second-half?) Cracked article: The 5 Most Unreasonably Difficult Video Game Puzzles Ever. I wrote Shadow of the Beast II and Professor Layton, though I also had entries for evolving Inkay into Malamar in Pokemon X and Y and the Nero family in Final Fantasy IX that got cut, I guess for being optional (C.K. Bond also wrote about the Black Monolith in FEZ). Also, my entries for Layton and Beast 2 appear to have been completely rewritten? Which is a little disheartening because I haven't had that happen since the Chrono Trigger entry in my very first article, and a shame because I was really attached to my joke about abusing Beast II's "ask" feature to swear at the snail when he cockblocked your quest.

In a previous update, I mentioned this article getting a setback. There was originally a fifth writer, the Brandon Drake guy I thanked in the byline. He pitched Castlevania II and I offered him Final Fantasy IX both because he pitched the bit about the sword (after I pitched the Nero family itself) and because he helped me redirect this article from something that didn't work, but when the article was finally accepted, he just... disappeared. The article was turned in a week late after I took FF9 back and C.K. Bond took Castlevania II.

So months ago I thought I'd finally dive into the Sega-16 topic featured in Odds and Ends Vol. 3 to celebrate another publication on Cracked. But it took so long for this article to get accepted and published that I eventually lost interest, especially when I doubt such a MOREC would be much more than me laughing Jim Sterling style at a man who would have an existential crisis if he ever found out Phantasy Star IV wasn't the first RPG to have combo magic.

Instead, I've converted the 2013 quickies to the new style and added them to the index. I also got a little happy with the index and included the quickies from October 2014 which I haven't actually finished writing, so I've removed those links. Also enjoy this collection of stuff I've written since my last Cracked article:

Review Quickies - Since my last article was published in September 2013, there's a year's worth of new stuff here.

I Am a Horrible Person and Sega-16 is Hilarious - Here's what happens when I'm still bitter about paying nearly $60 for a game that made me want to rip my own teeth out, and I need an April Fool's special and some filler while I get a major project done.

11/18 - Calm Before The Winter Storm
The new design has been applied to the Game Music and File Cabinet main pages, and all of MOREC. The Review Quickies main page and all the 2014 quickies have also been updated to the new style. A while back site reader Spencer suggested an index for the quickies which I've finally implemented, but it currently only has the 2014 items on it. I'll add to it as I revamp the quickies from previous years.

Also, I'd like to shout out to reader Allan for pointing out I had confused Anthony Hopkins with Bob Hoskins in a couple quickies.

11/14 - Cheez Waffies
I'm still toying around with the layout of the main page. A little while back I changed the header and rearranged stuff to make the top of the page smaller and less cluttered. Then I changed it again to the current version with the Lemmings background. And this image may itself just be a placeholder until I can plan, draw, and possibly digitally paint a mural I have in mind. Again, if anybody has any feedback to offer, email or tweet me, or post at my forum.

(And if anyone's wondering what's with the header of this update, check my Twitter feed)

UPDATE UPDATE: Holy fuckup, Batman! When I was trying to upload the re-reformatted Pier Solar review, I somehow uploaded it into the main File Cabinet directory. That's been fixed. Such are the joys of having to update the site at 2:30 in the morning because of bandwidth restrictions.

10/31 - HULK GO TRICK-OR-TREATING AS... WELL, HULK
So it's Halloween, a time for monsters and all, so here's the second chapter of the Merged Hulk. I'm going to confess right now that this was harder to write than the first chapter because I'm not quite as passionate about these issues.

Also, since people seemed to prefer the white plate style for the articles, I've applied that to both chapters. I also slightly edited it so the border doesn't "pop" and just has a solid gray border.

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